Re: VERY confused FICO...

Thanks for the insight, Greg.

I guess while Ive come to understand what creditors like to see on a credit history, the scoring itself still confounds me except the part about getting it higher, which seems to be just a half a dozen points or so that seem to be pretty consistent....ie pay on time, pay more than the minimum payment, dont borrow too much too fast, be consistent with your finances, etc, etc.....ie dont send any red flags to lenders that you may be in financial trouble or be irresponsible with credit, which I guess at the end of the day is about all we can do to improve our credit anyway.

...Re: VERY confused FICO...

And I forgot to mention the rest...

I asked her about the CL for the new SF CC and she said they gave me $5000 for starters which I was a little amazed by seeing that the Chase card I just cancelled that this one was to replace refused to give me more than $500 because they say I have too much credit available.

Just called chase and thanked them for the credit line but said I wanted to cancel because I really have no need for a $500 CL because of the way we use our cards which is using them for ALL of our purchases each month then paying the whole balance end of month. $500 bare covers groceries for a month...

Re: ...Re: VERY confused FICO...

Sometimes you can see that the reps are making statements based upon your account and sometimes they seem to use canned or generic answers that have little to do with you.

"too much credit available" rarely makes sense unless you have a very short history or no record of using any of the credit that you have. Some creditors report "Amount of last payment" and some Credit Reports show that information. Since you can't be sure they are seeing that info, it is usually best to allow the statement to generate and then pay in full. If you pay before the statement generates, some creditors may not see the use of the account.

Creditors offer you credit when they want new business and according to the risk they want to take at that moment. Chase may have opened you at $500 more because of their situation than yours. A new account is generally not way above or way below your other credit limits but sometimes they are way off. Chase lowered my limits on my two accounts, while CapOne, Discover, BofA, and Amex have raised my limits during the same time. It clearly has more to do with them than it does with me. Amex drastically reduced my limits before that when they were having problems.

Re: ...Re: VERY confused FICO...

GregB wrote:

Sometimes you can see that the reps are making statements based upon your account and sometimes they seem to use canned or generic answers that have little to do with you.

"too much credit available" rarely makes sense unless you have a very short history or no record of using any of the credit that you have. Some creditors report "Amount of last payment" and some Credit Reports show that information. Since you can't be sure they are seeing that info, it is usually best to allow the statement to generate and then pay in full. If you pay before the statement generates, some creditors may not see the use of the account.

Creditors offer you credit when they want new business and according to the risk they want to take at that moment. Chase may have opened you at $500 more because of their situation than yours. A new account is generally not way above or way below your other credit limits but sometimes they are way off. Chase lowered my limits on my two accounts, while CapOne, Discover, BofA, and Amex have raised my limits during the same time. It clearly has more to do with them than it does with me. Amex drastically reduced my limits before that when they were having problems.

What happened then was they gave me $200 CL at first. But at the same time gave the wife $5000 on her card.

I called them and told them to cancel because I have way too much credit to be fooling around with that low of a limit so they upped it to $500. I let it go until now because I use the card sometimes to buy stuff on Amazon and get triple points, but the wifes Amazon chase has a $5000 limit so there really isnt any need to be spreading earned points over the two cards anyway.

Initially they gave me three other reasons why they wouldnt go higher on the CL, none of them made sense so I pursued it more and finally they came back with 'You have too much available credit' and thats where we've been since.

Oddly enough Citibank during all this was giving me one CLI after another without even running a credit check and has been at me every couple months to let them put more cash into my checking account for whatever I want to spend it on. Its nice to know its there but I dont need to get into any serious debt.

I think my previous bad credit from years ago may be more of a factor for Chase than just having too much available credit that I never use.

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IMPORTANT INFORMATION: All FICO® Score products made available on myFICO.com include a FICO® Score 8, along with additional FICO® Score versions. Your lender or insurer may use a different FICO® Score than the versions you receive from myFICO, or another type of credit score altogether. Learn more

FICO, myFICO, Score Watch, The score lenders use, and The Score That Matters are trademarks or registered trademarks of Fair Isaac Corporation. Equifax Credit Report is a trademark of Equifax, Inc. and its affiliated companies. Many factors affect your FICO Score and the interest rates you may receive. Fair Isaac is not a credit repair organization as defined under federal or state law, including the Credit Repair Organizations Act. Fair Isaac does not provide "credit repair" services or advice or assistance regarding "rebuilding" or "improving" your credit record, credit history or credit rating. FTC's website on credit.